Urine drug testing is a commonly used tool to detect a subject's use of drugs, both legal (e.g., controlled substances) and illegal. During the last half century the use of urine drug testing has been used throughout the military, in the public and private workplace, in courts, and in medical clinics and care centers. The urine drug tests are used primarily to detect illegal or banned substances in a subject's system. In the clinical setting, physicians test their patients to determine if their patients are adhering to their prescriptions. Urine drug testing has become a routinely used effective tool in the assessment and ongoing management of patients who are treated with controlled substances for, e.g., chronic pain. The urine drug testing results provide confirmation of the agreed-upon treatment plan and diagnose relapse or drug abuse.
The results of a urine drug test can have serious consequences for a patient including termination of prescription. In fear of the possible consequences, patients have developed a variety of methods to cheat by substituting their own urine sample with synthetic or chemically-adulterated urines. Patients who “cheat” a urine drug test by using chemically-adulterated samples or synthetic urine present a problem for the health care because the ongoing care plan will not be based on accurate information. Currently, the best method for validating that a patient's sample is in fact their own is by observation during sample collection—which is not always possible.